


A Love We Couldn't Hold

by orphan_account



Series: A Haroline Story [1]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-13 15:59:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/826112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seventy-eight. But he wasn’t really keeping an accurate count.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Love We Couldn't Hold

It had been seventy-eight days since Harry and Caroline had reached a “mutual decision” to end their relationship. Seventy-eight days since he last held her in his arms, last kissed her lips, her neck, her stomach, her thighs. Seventy-eight days since he last heard the laugh that made his heart swell. Seventy-eight. But he wasn’t really keeping an accurate count. Nor was he constantly thinking of her.

Caroline saw him as an equal. While most saw him as a teenager, she saw him as a man. A man she deemed capable of intelligent conversation, witty banter, and passionate sex.

He had fancied her long before they were ever anything. Her charismatic personality drew him in and her laugh kept him there. They shared so many mutual friends, he knew he wouldn’t get any grief from those closest to them because they understood he was light-years beyond most his age. There was a reason he associated with people ten years older than him. Caroline provided Harry with a connection he craved. What would be the point in having a physical relationship with someone who couldn’t hold a conversation for ten minutes?

Sex with Caroline was different too; much more than with any girl from back home. Because they were just that: girls, fumbling and giggling and guarded and unsure. Caroline knew what she wanted and how to get it. Harry marveled in learning the ways to make her sigh and moan and scream. The first time he ever felt her walls constrict around him, her thighs tremble, her heart pound in her chest as it pressed against his, he knew it was what he wanted. He never even knew he was missing something so extraordinary from his life.

But that something extraordinary quickly turned bitter when the whispers started. Then the rumors began, and then the blind rage came. The hatred towards the woman he adored absolutely baffled him. He didn’t understand how people couldn’t see she made him happy. How she made his eyes light up like Tower Bridge at night. How she made him speechless and dumbstruck and act like the teenage boy he tried so desperately to prove he wasn’t. 

He tried hard not to let it affect him, to affect them. But the increasing comments and the accompanying articles made it too difficult. He knew it wasn’t meant to be a forever affair, but he wanted more than three months. It wasn’t enough. He didn’t want to let go of the feelings he had and the woman responsible for creating them. She was quite honestly the most phenomenal person he had ever encountered, and to know that her ever-constant presence in his life could end broke his heart in a way from which he knew it would never recover.

And now he sat in a hotel room in…Sydney? having an overwhelming urge to text her. To see her response and know things would be alright. Since the ”mutual decision” had been made, he had been on a dizzying promotional tour: Chicago, New York, Dallas, some cities he had never even heard of before he arrived in them. He had been to so many places, half the time he didn’t even remember where he was. It kept his brain busy during the day, but at night when he was alone in his hotel room it screamed, making the lonely silence obsolete. Harry and Caroline had stayed in contact, texts here and there, a quick reminder they held the power to stay friendly. It was, after all, a “mutual decision” to end things.

He twirled his phone in his hands. He looked at the clock. 2:17am. He opened the World Clock and looked at London’s time. 5:17pm. He scrolled through his messages until he got to hers and hovered over it for a second before opening the conversation. Thumbs poised over the keyboard, he quickly tapped out, “I was nearly eaten by a bull shark today.” before hitting send and throwing his phone to the foot of the bed. He didn’t care if she responded. No matter what she said it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

Seventy-eight. It was sure to get easier at some point and he couldn’t wait until that day came.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from "Say Goodbye" by Fleetwood Mac.


End file.
